Posted on 01/22/2013 7:53:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Texas is in much better shape than California. Taxes are lower, in part because Texas has no state income tax.
No wonder the Lone Star State is growing faster and creating more jobs.
And the gap will soon get even wider since California voters recently decided to drive away more productive people by raising top tax rates.
But a key challenge for all governments is controlling the size and cost of bureaucracies.
Government employees are probably overpaid in both states, but the situation is worse in California, as I discuss in a recent interview with John Stossel.
But being better than California is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Texas fiscal policy.
A column in today’s Wall Street Journal, written by the state’s Comptroller of Public Accounts, points out some worrisome signs.
As the chief financial officer of the nation’s second-largest state, even I have found it hard to get a handle on how much governments are spending, and how much debt they’re taking on. Every level of government is piling up incredible bills. And they’re coming due, whether we like it or not. Even in low-tax Texas, property taxes have risen three times faster than the inflation rate and four times faster than our population growth since 1992. Our local governments, meanwhile, more than doubled their debt load in the last decade, to more than $7,500 in debt for every man, woman and child in the state. In Houston alone, city-employee pension plans are facing an unfunded liability of $2.4 billion. But too many taxpayers aren’t given the information they need to make informed decisions when they vote debt issues. Recently I spent several months holding about 40 town-hall meetings with Texans across our state. Each time, I asked the attendees if they could tell me how much debt their local governments are carrying. Not a single person in a single town had this information.
In other words, taxpayers need to be eternally vigilant, regardless of where they live. Otherwise the corrupt rectangle of politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and interest groups will figure out hidden ways of using the political process to obtain unearned wealth.
Dan Mitchell Comparing Excessive Bureaucrat Compensation in Texas and California
Another post that is a perfect example of why California failed.
Evangelicals are mentioned because they are the rightwing core, the conservative base, states that have a lot of them are stronger in the face of liberalism, than those lacking them.
At the rate people flee your state, you must get to say that quite often.
Give us that "warrior call" as you flee from the liberals...
Um, you mean like those early pilgrims who came here and settled this country? Religious freedom is mentioned first in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Not trying to intrude on your conversation with ansell2, but that sort of comment is hard to pass up. Yes, you can have many different religions producing conservative values, and you can even have atheists who are prolife and pro-free markets, pro-gun, etc etc.
But it's like ansell said. The founders, being steeped in centuries of advanced Christian thought, engineered the best anti-tyranny machine in the history of the human race. If you want to win the fight we are in now, you need the clarity of vision that comes with that model of liberty. Christ came to set us free. Yes, spiritually first of all, but ultimately in every way that is good.
BTW, I do not regard anyone who has aspirations of deity to be a good choice of leader. We may be in a fight with Obama for some years to come, but at least we didn't pick a fight with God just to get rid of Obama. That would really be a losing proposition.
I just wish so many people had not been fooled by the mindless mantra of his much vaunted but unproven electability. And of course there was fraud, so he may have actually won and all this angst against Christian dissenters may be pointless. I don't think there were really that many of us to make a difference. I was shocked at the outcome.
You are a liar, you didn't see that.
This is what you saw upthread.
""I know California politics and Texas politics, and California has never been a right wing state, Texas is.
California has been republican, but never truly conservative, and it doesn’t have the dedicated Christians like Texas does, the “Evangelical” God warriors.
Look at your own post there, you go after “The so-called Christian Right” and compare the right-wing Evangelical voting block, the culture warriors, the only true enemies of the left, to “Muzzies”.
Your post shows how and why it was easy for the left to absorb you so easily, there was never even a serious battle for California, the left took it with barely a shot being fired.
Frankly you sound like a lefty the way you practically spit when you mention the core conservatives.
In fact less people means less taxes for the corrupt state government...Less taxes for unions, less taxes for their bloated pensions etc...They eventually choke...No?
My mistake, I thought you considered yourself to be a “dedicated Christan” and “Evangelical God warrior”...Apparently not.
I’m glad for you, that you see the native Californians and Americans fleeing your state and find good news in that.
Personally, I see that as accelerating the decay of the state, although so far it hasn’t had much effect on the total size of it’s population, over the years that it has been taking place.
I don’t predict improvement for California, I predict a permanent decline.
> I’m happy to take the northern conservatives in Michigan to keep our momentum. We just need to find a way to convince liberals to go to Europe and stay there.
...and take the current CIC with them while they’re at it. Or ship them to Antarctica to set up a new colony. Maybe they could call it Fruit Land...
How come you evade all the questions?
Should I ask them again?
You keep trying to personalize the discussion and make personal attacks, again, it is so indicative of how California failed, see post 85.
Why won't you answer the questions?
You keep trying to personalize the discussion and make personal attacks
You're funnier than a barrel of monkeys..
Um, you mean like those early pilgrims who came here and settled this country? But it's like ansell said. The founders, being steeped in centuries of advanced Christian thought, engineered the best anti-tyranny machine in the history of the human race.
I'd bet a cup of coffee, the Indians who were here before your pilgrims would totally disagree with your comment.
Quote the entire sentence.
“”Frankly you sound like a lefty the way you practically spit when you mention the core conservatives.””
That is true, post after post of you seeming to really go after the American conservative base, the Evangelicals, Christians, with hostility.
Your posts are not reading like a conservative, in fact you seem to want to get past the thread subject and go into bashing religion.
Why are you evading the questions?
Your kind of conservative post will only bring out the worst in some of the Californians.
A thread like this shows that even if they had it to do over again, they would choose the same path they took before, and still destroy their state.
Social liberalism kills again.
Here in Illinois, it is just one big city that runs and ruins the entire state.
“BTW, I do not regard anyone who has aspirations of deity to be a good choice of leader. We may be in a fight with Obama for some years to come, but at least we didn’t pick a fight with God just to get rid of Obama. That would really be a losing proposition.
Now I understand where you are coming from. you hate Mormons for their beliefs in “eternal progression.”
No, you cannot know who or what I hate unless I tell you. You are not God, and cannot see my heart. In my heart, I believe Jesus when he said we should love even our enemies. The problem is, leftists (and it seems many Mormons and Mormon supporters even here), do not understand what love and hate are.
If I love someone, do I encourage them to do drugs, or stand blindfolded in the middle of a busy street, or vote Democratic? Of course not. I want them to live, and have a good, happy, prosperous life. Therefore, when I see them doing dangerous, self-destructive things, I have to choose whether to risk offending them in the short term, or “keep the peace” by letting them go ahead and destroy themselves. I don’t think you really love somebody if you don’t have the courage to tell them they are going to get hurt if they keep doing something bad.
But if you view religion as not that important, just some random meaningless cafeteria of spiritual beliefs that has no inherent capacity to do either harm or good, then I could see how you’d think it was bad to make distinctions over what you consider meaningless things.
But these are not meaningless things. There really is a God in Heaven, and He will not give His glory to another, whether they dress it up in Gnostic sophistry (aka “eternal progression”), or hard, cold statism. O-Caesar is NOT God (though he might harbor that delusion), and neither is any other mortal (except of course for Jesus), nor will they ever become such over time and eternity, no matter what their religious leaders tell them.
To defy God on this point is to invite apocalyptic catastrophe, to bring real and everlasting harm to precious souls. Why would anyone who claims to love his brother and sister humans wish such evil upon them? That WOULD be hate, to remain silent as a soul slips off unchallenged into eternity in defiance of the Almighty. Love speaks the truth, even when it offends, even when it draws false accusations of being hateful, because love does whatever it has to, to bring redemption and healing to those who are loved.
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